


Their Dances

by Bouzingo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel
Genre: Dancing, Dreamsharing, F/M, Steggy Secret Santa, Trans Peggy Carter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 10:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3065117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bouzingo/pseuds/Bouzingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Peggy and Steve meet each other in their dreams. That's when they can dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Dances

Steve Rogers lies in the ice, insensate and unmoving. But he doesn’t stop dreaming. What does he dream about? He dreams about Brooklyn, and Bucky, and Europe, and Peggy.

This is a dream about Peggy.

While his soldier’s body is frozen, the body Steve knows is free within his mind. He finds himself in a small apartment that’s both like his one in Brooklyn and not, and Peggy is there, straightening his lapels with a fond smile on her red lips.

“We’ll make a funny pair,” Steve says quietly. “In general, women don’t like a guy they can see over while dancing.”

“You make it sound like you don’t want to dance, Steve,” Peggy says, fixing a red flower that matches the one in her hair to Steve’s left lapel, the one over his heart. “And I know that isn’t true.”

Steve smiles back and puts on his coat when Peggy finally finds him acceptable.

It’s raining in the city and Peggy’s hand is warm in Steve’s. He feels cold, is nearly taken out of the dream by the pervasive ice, but Peggy grasps his hand tighter and pulls him into the dance hall.

It’s warm and golden in the dancehall, and Peggy laughs unguardedly, flower falling out of her hair. Steve bends over to pick it up.

* * *

 

Peggy Carter comes back from work, feet sore and hair askew, and sometimes she can’t even muster the energy to take off her shoes before she falls asleep in her clothes. She doesn’t often remember her dreams, but that doesn’t mean they don’t occur.

Tonight she dreams about Steve.

He holds out a flower that dropped from her hair, and she leans down so he can put it back. He kisses her after he does, and she feels herself colour warm, even though his lips are very, very cold.

“Let’s go dancing now,” Peggy says, and pulls him onto the crowded dance floor.

It’s a slow dance, plenty of time for them to find their feet and get used to the difference of proficiency between them. Peggy is still used to leading, from her army days, and it seems like Steve isn’t very used to either.

“Sorry,” he mumbles abashedly. “Two left feet and no depth perception.”

“This is the most fun I’ve had dancing in years,” Peggy says sincerely. “But if you’d like, I could lead a bit.”

“That’d be swell,” Steve says, and smiles when Peggy takes his waist. None of he other dancers seem to mind, but neither Peggy nor Steve would care much for their scrutiny. This feels good, is exactly what they’d been waiting to do for so long.

“Peggy,” Steve says after an endless moment that is perfect and somehow bittersweet. “I want to see you again.”

“We _will,_ darling,” Peggy says, with the insistence of someone who’s said it many times before without really knowing. “We’ll meet again next week, same time, same place.”

Their second kiss of the night is fierce and inappropriate for the public setting, but neither of them cares, because suddenly the evening is cut short and she wakes up. Who knows where Steve goes.

But the next time he slips into the world of dreams, and then next time Peggy falls into deep, exhausted sleep, they’re together at the club again.

* * *

 

“You know, I see him sometimes,” Howard professes. “I see Steve.”

“I do too,” Peggy says. Her hand ghosts to her desk drawer, where the picture of him is kept safe. She doesn’t care to elaborate, because she knows Howard is haunted by ghosts while she sees only the living.

“I wish I could find him,” Howard says. “It feels like all this money is just for show. He’s alone somewhere.”

“I don’t believe he’s alone,” Peggy says abruptly. Their meeting finishes shortly after that. Steve as a subject generally brings an end to all conversations.

When Howard is safely away Peggy pulls out the picture, knows it won’t be long before they find one another in their dreams again.

* * *

 

Steve doesn’t tell the SHIELD appointed psychiatrist about the times that he woke up encased in ice and lungs flooded. He doesn’t tell him about the nightmares about cold he has, to the point where he has to run his showers on the hottest setting and wears several sweaters the moment he senses a chill in the air. He knows the psychiatrist wouldn’t understand, and prefers not to talk about the ice anyway.

Peggy can understand, however. Acutely. They don’t talk much about the possibility, or rather the impossibility, of shared dreams. But they do talk about the ice; Steve about breathing in shards of water and Peggy about the many searches she undertook in the Arctic when she wasn’t saving the world from certain danger. The glaring white of the snow and ice that eventually turned red, made her blind until the short nights.

They have their first dance together in a room and it is wonderful. Peggy still leads although now her head barely reaches Steve’s shoulder, and Steve’s smile is just the same as it always is when she leads.

“After all these years, still two left feet,” she murmurs into his chest, “Darling, you’re pure muscle now, you can’t keep stepping on my toes.”

“Sorry,” Steve says apologetically, and lifts her, to her delighted protests. “Better?”

“I can’t very well lead from up here, you gigantic dolt,” she smiles. “My god, you haven’t changed a bit. Even if you have.”

“I’m glad you think so,” he says. “I still have trouble coming to grips with it. Sometimes I still think…”

He puts her down gently, lost in his thoughts. She touches his cheek.

“I don’t think we shall ever come to grips with our bodies,” she says. “But I am happy with mine, at the very least. And I hope that you can be too.”

“Thank you,” Steve says. “Nobody else even came close to finding me. I was so cold. You were the only thing that kept me alive, I’m convinced of it. I couldn’t have survived without you.”

“And I couldn’t have lived so long without the promise of seeing you again, even if it was just in a dream,” Peggy says.

They kiss. It’s the first time they’ve been face to face for a kiss since that time before the ice.


End file.
